


welcome to ba sing se

by norio



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Avatar & Benders Setting, Brainwashing, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-08
Updated: 2016-07-08
Packaged: 2018-07-22 08:33:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7427713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/norio/pseuds/norio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AtLA AU. Akaashi is an <s>please</s> earthbender and Bokuto is a <s>listen</s> firebender. There is no <s>there is a war there is an eclipse please listen please free him</s> war in Ba Sing Se.</p>
            </blockquote>





	welcome to ba sing se

There is no war in Ba Sing Se.

 

“Do you ever feel like you’re forgetting something?” 

“No. Please eat your porridge.”

 

Akaashi is eight. He wakes up at night. Outside his window, the shadows wrap around his neighbor’s house. 

The next morning, his neighbor smiles vacantly at him.

 

Akaashi is twelve. His brush is fifty years older, gilded in gold and finely tufted with badgermole fur. It is heavy in his small hand. 

He tackles the provincial imperial tests for the Middle Ring. The scratchy straw serves as his bedding. The tiny window serves as his light. For six days and five nights, he quotes from the Great Books and Greater Virtues. While his face remains unmoved, his brush praises the Earth King for his benevolent provisions and generous protection unto the undeserving. 

A month later, he kneels down for the court exams. Unlike the other tests, the head of the Dai Li has personally designed the questions. Akaashi’s answers dance towards filial piety, loyalty, and respect. But strange questions float between literary essays and morality issues, eerie and disquieting. His brow wrinkles. His brush slows.

_How do you escape an unlocked room?_

_You are in a desert. What do you drink?_

_Why are you unloved?_

 

“No, I’m serious, Akaashi—sometimes, I feel like I’m forgetting something really important—something really, really important—”

“Your porridge will get cold.”

 

There is no war within the walls.

 

They open a tea shop in the Upper Ring and live in a small apartment above the store. In the early evenings, Akaashi opens the shutters. A slight breeze rolls through the room, stirring the scent of ginseng and jasmine. Bokuto perches on the window, holding a clay tea cup in his hands. 

“Akaashi, my tea’s cold,” Bokuto complains. 

“I see.”

“Have some heart, Akaashi! You try drinking cold tea! It’s sad, it’s sad.”

But the clay glows a dark red. The tea bubbles. Smoke rises. Bokuto gapes at the newly warmed tea in his hands.

“Akaashi,” Bokuto whispers, awed, “I’m a firebender?” 

Rocks begin to collect at Akaashi’s hands.

 

Akaashi is thirteen. He enters Dai Li training. 

The earthbending lessons take up the morning shift. His agile eyes can spot the best pathway for launching the earth columns and softening the soil for the landings. His earth levitation and projectile earthbending ranks the top of the class. In three flicks of the wrist, small chunks of terrain rise from the ground and smash into the wall. He’s adequate at shielding and rock gloves. While he hangs from the ceiling, rock smoothing into rock, his teachers nod and jot down notes on their scrolls.

He likes earthbending, but he prefers the desk jobs of the Dai Li. But it’s the head of the Dai Li who decides on the resource allocations, plotting down Akaashi’s fate like the stone tracks of the monorail. By then, Akaashi understands the strange questions on the last court examination. They tested his personality, probing his strengths and weaknesses. Somewhere, written in his scroll, the Dai Li has decided where he serves them best. 

It worries him that he’s scored the highest in Ba Sing Se. Sometimes, he catches Dai Li agents watching him with appraising eyes.

 

Bokuto pesters him about buying chicken for dinner. He wants roasted chicken, or duck, or lobster crab. Meat, he declares majestically with his voice muffled into the bed. Meat is what he wants for dinner. Akaashi buys deep-fried pickled radishes. Vegetables. Vegetables are what’s actually for dinner. 

When he enters the apartment, Bokuto stares at a scorch mark on the wall. The flames on his hands flicker out. Bokuto blinks at him, a slack confusion to his face. 

Akaashi slams Bokuto into the wall, hard enough for a vase to fall and crack. He clamps a ring of pebbles around Bokuto’s arms, legs, and mouth. Bokuto tries to yell.

“The Earth King has invited you to Lake Laogai,” Akaashi whispers. Bokuto’s eyes narrow in anger. Gold eyes. Burning gold. But Bokuto’s head slumps forward and his body loses the furious tension. 

That night, they have roasted chicken for dinner.

 

Here, we are safe.

 

Akaashi is assigned to Cultural Heritage Protection. Scrolls pass through his desk and he tosses them into the slow green fire. His job is a period on a sentence that has long since ended. Other Dai Li agents have already stamped the offending scrolls with reasons of their demolishment. If Akaashi disagrees with their decision, he writes up a revoking form and sends it to the Cultural Authority sector that considers the form to pass along to the Cultural Preservation sector that will ultimately revoke Akaashi’s revocation. After all, a harsh punishment exists for the Dai Li agents who approve culturally damaging documents.

Thin allegories about the Earth Kingdom, featuring innocent badgermoles and royal creeping slime. Discarded. Reports from outside the walls. Waterbenders, capable of bending the water in plants, have been found. The moon spirit’s life has been recovered. The Avatar has not been found. The exiled fire prince has not been found. Omashu has fallen to the Fire Nation. Discarded. Letters daring to insinuate a war rages onwards beyond the stone walls. Discarded. A story about love and hope. Discarded. 

Akaashi studies the story. Unlike others of its kind, which have been stamped for offending lewdness, nothing stands out in the brush strokes. The simple story follows two lovers who find each other and use old phrases about hope and love to somehow save the world. He finds the story insipid, not damaging. But the demolishment stamp declares the story would cast too many unbelievable aspirations into the malleable minds of the young. Hope and love, the stamp says, do not save the day. 

He tosses the scroll into the fire and moves onto the next.

 

“Akaashi! Come here already!” 

“What’s wrong.”

“At least pretend you’re worried, Akaashi!” 

“Whatever could be the problem?”

“Pretend better!” Bokuto drags him by the collar to the next stall. Akaashi gives up on finding the perfect mushrooms for their dinner. He expects Bokuto’s attention to be caught by a shiny toy, but Bokuto points to a wilted flower instead. 

“Fix it,” Bokuto says. Akaashi barely refrains from rolling his eyes. He’s not a botanist. He can’t possibly help the flower. But he still uncorks his water cask and drips the water into the thin vase. He arranges the flower closer to the sun, where the petals unfurl. This is all he can do with his two hands. Before he delivers a droll apology for his inability to save strange plants on a whim, Bokuto’s grin widens with pride. 

“Good,” Bokuto says simply. Akaashi’s protests flicker out in his throat. So this is kindness, he thinks.

 

Here, we are free.

 

The labyrinthine nature of the Dai Li headquarters forces Akaashi to pass through the holding cells for political honored guests. Most of the cells empty out within the day. The suggestion chamber hums along at a steady pace. Though he’s never practiced with a human, he’s been trained to use the ring with the revolving lamp. He stands rooted to the ground, a medium stance with his feet planted firm, while he whispers about the walls. 

This is a kindness, his teacher told the class. The Earth King is kind. Ba Sing Se is kind.

Only one cell always holds an honored guest. Goosebumps prickle on Akaashi’s skin when he approaches the colder metal cell. Inside, chains strap the guest to the frigid wall. Occasionally the guest breathes a stuttering thin fire to ward off the blue on his lips. Frost crawls on the fine dark red and delicate gold clothing. But he stares out with a frightening intensity.

“Hey,” the guest calls out when Akaashi passes, “Let me out already. I thought earthbenders were supposed to be sedimental.”

“Hey hey! I’m telling you, you’ll really dig what I gotta say about the solar eclipse.”

“Hey hey hey! Don’t take me for granite! You can take down the Fire Nation invasion before it hits Ba Sing Se!” 

The exiled fire prince has not been found. The exiled fire prince is not rotting in a cell, telling bad puns to try to get anyone to listen. 

 

There is no war in Ba Sing Se. 

 

“This is a promotion,” his leader says. Akaashi places his polite hands behind his back, back straight and strong. He listens without reacting. The official papers for the transfer had already taken place, and he moves from Cultural Heritage Protection to a nameless group of the Dai Li. The exiled fire prince needed a handler. The suggestion chamber worked well on Bokuto’s mind, but he forgot about forgetting too easily and needed to return there often. Akaashi would live with him in the Upper Ring under the guise of a simple tea seller and monitor his actions. This was a promotion.

“He seemed pleased when your name was announced,” the leader says, off-handed. 

“I’ve never spoken to him.”

“We know.” The leader dismisses the rebuttal with a wave of his hand. The city has eyes and ears. Akaashi’s words surely were recorded in a scroll in some distant storage. 

“Then why would he be pleased?”

“Ah,” the leader says. “You were apparently the only one who looked disgusted with his jokes.”

 

He has asked Bokuto to clean out the teapots. He returns to find Bokuto running outside with the children, playing earth soccer. The children’s feet dig into the ground, earth columns ripping through the dirt. The smashing waves carry the ball towards the goal, but Bokuto darts along the growing earth and kicks the ball into Akaashi’s face. 

Akaashi stares down at the ball. 

“Akaashi! I’m sorry! I—didn’t do it.” Bokuto tries to point to a child, but a thin tower of gravel knocks his hand away.

“Did you clean the teapots,” Akaashi says. 

“Ye… No. It’s a funny story, Akaashi! I was going to, but then a ball just flies through the window, and—”

“You saw us and begged to play too,” the child says. 

“It’s fine,” Akaashi says, cutting off Bokuto’s quibbling. “Come inside already.” 

“That’s good, that’s good,” he hears Bokuto telling the child, “I mean, it’d be dangerous to keep playing. Clumsy people must get hurt all the time if they can’t dodge flying balls.”

He doesn’t know how it’s come to this. Three hours later, Akaashi is still playing earth soccer. 

Akaashi rapidly raises a wall, but the ball smashes through the thinnest part. Bokuto’s momentum propels him onto Akaashi. They fall into a cloud of dirt, and Akaashi tries to remember why he thought playing earth soccer was a good idea. But Bokuto sits on his lap and laughs, dirt smudging his face and hands, new bruises spreading on his forearm. 

“Again,” Bokuto demands. 

 

They run through the Crystal Catacombs to the old city of Ba Sing Se. When Akaashi visited the ruins in his free time, the green light from the crystals cast a soft and lonely glow in the shadows of broken doors and windows. Now, he yanks a stone wall in a rockslide over Bokuto. 

“Akaashi!” Bokuto leaps away, twisting his body with agility. “I know you! Listen to me!” 

He needs to return Bokuto to the suggestion chamber. The hypnosis had worn off again. Bokuto remembers faster and faster each time.

“There’s a war,” Bokuto says, “but Ba Sing Se can still stop the invasion! There’s going to be an eclipse—” Akaashi collapses another stone wall at the fissure. Bokuto smashes the chunks away, and the flaming rock buries into the cave walls. Bokuto’s fists bash away the hard boulders, flames bursting into the cracks. It’s too bad. With Akaashi’s earth projectiles and Bokuto’s fire strength, they could have made a good team.

“Stop that!” Bokuto yells. “I’m gonna get really annoyed, Akaashi!” 

This time, Akaashi jabs his wrists forward to pull up a defensive wall against Bokuto’s fire comets. He grinds his teeth, piling more dirt onto the walls where the fire smashes into the surface and burns the rock away. The blaze is strong. The charged fire comets resonate so heavily into his arms that he barely recognizes another vibration rapidly approaching his side. The fire whip smacks across his chest, and he barrels backwards. 

“I have friends, outside the walls,” Bokuto says. “You can at least help me escape!”

Akaashi levitates slabs of rocks, leaping on them across the river. Bokuto had reeled his shoulder back and let the whip ran rampant, the flames snapping and biting. Akaashi’s chest stung and burned, skin a blistering raw red. He winces when he runs, letting Bokuto knock over his raised walls like dominoes. He latches his rock glove onto the wall, gliding over the cave to give himself some time to reel back from the wound. Bokuto jets himself into the air and hurls down fireballs. 

“Akaashi, this isn’t right! You know it!” 

Maybe not. But in the end, Akaashi manages to bury him in rubble, restraining his movements. The former chair in the Cultural Heritage Protection surveys the destroyed houses of the ancient Ba Sing Se. Bokuto narrows his eyes from his old prison. 

“Again?” he asks.

 

There is no peace in Ba Sing Se.

 

“This is a pretty city,” Bokuto says, sitting on the monorail. The train passes above the vast fields of verdant and emerald green. The huge walls cast a shadow over the rim. 

“Yes,” Akaashi says.

 

“I don’t really know how to explain firebending,” Bokuto says, blinking away the ice crystals. Akaashi leans against the cold metal door. 

“That doesn’t surprise me.”

“Just for that, I’m gonna show you up and explain it really well, Akaashi!” Bokuto wrinkles his nose in thought. “It’s like inside you, there’s a fire. So you put it outside.”

“Fascinating.” 

“Oh, come on! You explain earthbending, then, Akaashi.” 

“Strength.” The Dai Li uniform’s collar is stiff.

“That’s a bad explanation, Akaashi.” Bokuto closes his eyes. “But you know, I get it. You’re strong. Inside you, it’s all strong.”

Akaashi curls his fingers into his hand, nails digging into his palm. 

 

The memory lapses worsen. Barely a week passes before Akaashi brings Bokuto down to the chamber again. His leader begins to frown. Letting Bokuto wander the Upper Ring was a kindness, one that the Dai Li did not have to give. The exiled fire prince was a valuable bargaining chip, but Bokuto could spend the rest of the days in the ice cell. But Bokuto remembers and remembers and remembers. 

The burn on Akaashi’s chest throbs every night. He lays awake, sheets curled around his legs. In the kitchen area, barely fenced away by a low wall, he hears Bokuto walking to the window over the sink. The shutters clack open. Moonlight floods over the floor. Akaashi finally stirs, padding over with his bare feet. The houses in the Upper Ring spot out sparsely, not like the hasty crowd of the other rings where buildings overlap and merge and battle for space. Here, the luscious garden stretches languidly towards a wall. More houses and more walls rise from the horizon. 

“It’s beautiful,” Bokuto says. “Did you grow up here, Akaashi?”

“No. I was raised in the Middle Ring near the Ba Sing Se University. I studied their scholarly scrolls when I was a child.” He can still recite the Greater Virtues. Filial piety, loyalty, respect. His fingers tap along his arm, a physical memory of his childhood.

“Oh, yeah. You were a government official before you were a tea seller. That sounds boring.” 

“I had my reasons.”

“Yeah? Like what?”

“When I was younger, I saw what happens when rules are broken.” The listening Dai Li must surely be satisfied with his pious answer. But he remembers the night when the Dai Li took away his neighbor to the suggestion chamber. His fingers tighten on his upper arm when he recalls the absent smile of his jovial neighbor. His neighbor had been a professor at the university, and uttered a wrong passing word about the war. The unintentional whisper, off-handed and casual, sparks suspicion and fear. He compares the unkempt yard of his neighbor to the cold cavern of his former office.

“Oh?” Bokuto’s eyebrows tilt together. “Well, it’s a nice city.” 

Akaashi almost doesn’t recognize those words. His brush proclaims Ba Sing Se is a beautiful utopia, the last of its kind, a land beyond measure, the precious jade of the Earth Kingdom, the stronghold and utopia. Calling Ba Sing Se ‘nice’ was pathetically simple. But Bokuto’s words ring pathetically earnest. A swell of pride aches against his burn scar. 

“It’s late,” he says. “Go back to sleep.”

“I don’t wanna.” 

“You’ll be tired in the morning.”

“I can’t sleep! It’s too cold.” Bokuto slumps over the sink. Akaashi touches Bokuto’s arm. Cold. It’s cold. Akaashi has only seen the ghoulish masks of the Fire Nation soldiers from the paintings of discarded scrolls, and he’s woefully inexperienced. The Earth Kingdom must be adept at fighting off their soldiers, but they had never needed to tend to a firebender. The fireplace. He should have lit the fireplace. Or more blankets. Or open the shutters to give him more sun. But Akaashi is not a botanist. This is all he can do with his two hands. 

“I’m cold,” Bokuto mumbles into the crook of his elbow. 

This is a kindness. The Earth King is kind. Ba Sing Se is kind.

 

There is no love in Ba Sing Se. 

 

“It’s a better promotion,” his leader says. The exiled fire prince returns too many times to the suggestion chamber. The Dai Li has limited resources. The exiled fire prince can live in his ice cell, and Akaashi moves to another unnamed division. This sector is personally led by the head of the Dai Li. After all, Akaashi had the highest scores in the history of the Dai Li tests. The leader would like to individually train and look after this model Dai Li agent. Akaashi bows at the end of the speech and murmurs polite thanks. 

“Don’t make that face,” Bokuto says. “I know already. I overheard. Don’t worry about it, Akaashi.”

Akaashi’s hand presses flat against the cold cell door. His rock gloves insulate his hands from the cold. He cannot apologize for his failures. The city of walls watches and listens. 

“You’ll stay here for your remaining duration as our guest,” Akaashi says carefully. Bokuto scoffs, flames steaming through the air. 

“Yeah, yeah. But I’m telling you, Akaashi. I’m glad I chose you.” Bokuto reflects. “I think it was your eyes. You have good eyes.” 

Akaashi returns to his old quarters to collect his things. The tea shop closes. He sweeps around the space where Bokuto usually leans across the counter, baffled by the tea. Upstairs, he packs away his possessions into a small box. Most items are disposable. The other half, replaceable. He tucks away the two pairs of dining utensils and rolls up the two blankets. He meditates in the empty room. 

_Why are you unloved?_

 

He sleeps and dreams.

In his fevered dream, he stands atop the walls of Ba Sing Se. The Fire Nation marches towards the city. The ghoul masks and hulking metal ships and war balloons sweep across the stretch of soil. Fire crackles in the horizon, the sun spitting out flames behind the red flags. The information derived from the scrolls mingles with his vague fears. For some reason, the fire burns with the hiss of falling sand and chunks of earth smashing to the ground. 

“They’ve been coming for a hundred years,” Bokuto says. 

“This is the impenetrable city,” Akaashi says. 

“I hope so.” 

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Why are you asking your dream?” Bokuto laughs. Akaashi resists the urge to dream earthbend him far away. But Bokuto stretches out his arms, one towards the walls of Ba Sing Se, the other towards the encroaching flames of the Fire Nation.

“Fix it,” Bokuto says. 

 

Akaashi shoves his hand over Bokuto’s mouth, muffling the sounds of surprise. He unlocks the chains with the stolen keys and shoves a cape over him. The cell is cold. His hands are numb. But Bokuto runs warm. He brings him to the surface of Lake Laogai, and catches the late monorail to the edge of the wall. The stationmaster barely glances at them, though he and Bokuto are the only passengers at the late hour. Public transit makes Akaashi wary of potential Dai Li agents, but he has no choice. If they walked for a full day to the wall, the Dai Li would have noticed their missing prisoner by then.

“I knew you’d come. I knew it! It’s because you were charmed by me, right?” Bokuto says, loud enough over the scrape of the tracks. 

“It’s because I have a duty to protect Ba Sing Se from the Fire Nation invaders.”

“Oh.” Bokuto sulks for the rest of the trip, bested by his own former nation. 

They disembark at an earlier station. Akaashi would be recognized at the official doors of the wall, guarded by the metalbending Aone and Futakuchi who would remember his face. Instead, Akaashi chooses a pathway winding around the bustling fields. They pass by a robust field of cabbages. The city would likely not need any cabbage merchants this year. When they finally reach the wall, Akaashi prods and shoves Bokuto onto a slab of rock and begins pulling them upwards. Koganegawa with his strict schedule would be in charge of this portion of the wall. He wouldn’t pass through for some time.

“After I lower you down,” Akaashi says at the top, “orient yourself and head to the safest location. The Dai Li will focus their efforts around Ba Sing Se, so you should have time to hide and find your friends. I’ve packed some rations and bedding for you. Don’t eat everything at once. If you get hungry before a meal, I’ve allotted a snacking portion in the outer pocket. Are you listening?”

“Has anyone ever told you that this is a big city?” Bokuto has shoved his hood back, sleeves rolled up.

The rising sun breaks over the other edge of the wall. The monorail tracks cut through the garden of houses, where the verdant roofs vaguely bloom in the distance. Akaashi sees stone and strength. In the Lower Ring, he hears the constant murmur of the lumbering crowd through the narrow streets. He remembers the immense size of the factories and the laughter bursting through the open windows. If he stretches out his hands, they will never encompass the sheer size of the city. He allows his rock gloves to crumble to the ground, and grips his fingers together. 

“Besides, you make it sound like you’re not coming with me,” Bokuto says.

“I’m not.”

“Why not?” Bokuto strokes his chin. “They’ll know you freed me and you’ll be caught.”

“I can’t go with you.” Akaashi glances to the open sweep of land. “I’ve done too many wrong things. To you. To this city. They were wrong and unforgivable. I should receive my punishment.”

“You know, Akaashi, I was thinking about this. But you’re about my age, right? Younger, probably, because you’re way shorter. Fifteen? Sixteen?”

“I’m not way shorter.”

“Way, way shorter. Anyway, you’ve probably been studying to get into the Dai Li since you were a kid. You’re still a kid. But now you’re helping me! Isn’t that great, Akaashi?” Bokuto grins, but it wavers like the flame on a candle. “Akaashi, my hands aren’t clean, either. But we’re going to win this war. And after we win it, do you know what we’re gonna need?”

The wind stirs. Through the vibrations on the wall, he can sense the earthbenders in an adjacent tower, clattering and readying themselves for the patrol. The horizon in front of him, unlike his dream, is clear. 

“Hope and love,” he says softly. 

“Oh. I was gonna say, food and probably water. But you’re right about that!” Bokuto laughs. “Let’s go already, Akaashi.”

There is no fire inside Akaashi. He is an earthbender. He is cold boulders and harsh crags and strong gravel. But he thinks about the city beneath him that he wants to protect and the single flower in the stalls and the laughing firebender in front of him. Bokuto perches on the edge, hand held out. Behind him, the sand stretches out into the horizon, unimpeded by any walls.

When he takes Bokuto’s hand, the rocks inside him strike together into a spark.


End file.
